We are happy to announce that SSAB secretary Niels De Nutte (VUB-Odisee) has successfully defended his PhD thesis on Friday, 10th January 2025, in the Promotiezaal at VUB. The doctoral dissertation is titled “The Right-to-Die in Belgium. A History of Societal Attitudes, Conceptual Confusion and Advocacy Concerning Euthanasia between the 1920s and 1993” and was supervised by Prof. Dr. Jeffrey Tyssens.
Niels' dissertation reconstructs the history of the emergence of and terminology used in euthanasia debates in the Belgian context. Current insights on the history of this topical issue are limited to anecdotal histories or the personal memories of those involved as end-of-life opinion makers in the public sphere and proponents towards the political world since the 1980s. The unique position that Belgium still occupies globally in this matter today deserves a better insight into the presence of this problem in the public eye – as early at least as the 1930s – and the relationship of proponents and arguments to foreign developments. The latter is certainly not without importance from the 1980s onwards, most notably with both the active Dutch and American connections. The current research project shows how the connotation and argumentation surrounding euthanasia changed in Belgium in the last century, how criminal law related itself to the practice, what social support could be found for end-of-life practices and how the political world, in the decade leading up to the parliamentary work of the 1990s, dealt with the then relatively novel idea of a self-chosen end of life. This contributes to contemporary debates within historical research on the secularisation of dealing with death and dying, medical uncertainty, the evolution of bio- and medical ethics and the relevance of lifestance and religion and the corresponding political clivages in research.
For more information on his research and other (academic or not) contributions to the field, feel free to email Niels at niels.de.nutte@vub.be or niels.denutte@odisee.be, stay tuned for forthcoming publications!
